Oracle
by Rose Midnight Moonlight Black
Summary: Max is getting married, Terry's a widower. Max reflects that she's content with her lot in life, even if ending up like Barbara Gordon was never her desired destination - or is it? Terry is so unlike his father that maybe history wouldn't get repeated.


Oracle

I OWN NOTHING!

Point? I wanted to draw paralles between Max/Barbara, Terry/Bruce, Dana/Diana. How Terry ends up living Bruce's life until the day Bruce let go of Barbara and how Terry really isn't Bruce, only Oracle-Max forgets that she can only see the past not the future.

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I look beautiful.

I think that might be a constellation prize but still...I can't believe I'm here.

In church.

In a white dress.

Getting married to – well maybe not the man of my dreams but a good man none the less. Like I said, constellation prize.

I reach up to fix my veil. It so weird this, so very different from what I had ever though my wedding would be like. I never thought it would be in Gotham cathedral, dressed up like a queen's coronation. I never thought there would be reports lining up to get the best picture, for picture of me. I never thought I'd be dressed in a specially made Amazonian/Atlantican wedding dress – made with me in mind, sprinkled with fresh water pearls and wearing a royal tiara. This is my wedding gift from my friend, my justice league friends, because they aren't able to come to my wedding.

I still not entirely sure that it just because of the media and not because they wish my groom was another man. Hell, I almost wish my groom was another man. I sigh, and my hand absently brushes my bare neck. I still don't know where my necklace has disappeared too,

I see him before he even really in the room. Shadow trick never worked on me, much to both Bruce and Terry's annoyance and delight. He looks...well I not use how to say how he look. Well dress? Impeccable? No. Drunken? Hell not. He...

He doesn't look like Terry. Or at least not the Terry I knew. He looks like Batman, even outside of his armour. The eyes, the shadow – hell even the way he stands, that's Batman, never Terry.

He looks so difference in casual leather, his messy ebony hair grown out and pulled back. His eyes are so much darker and guarded than I ever remember. I don't want him here – or rather I don't want him to stand there, in that doorway, watching me in my wedding dress while he's wearing barely acceptable clothes for polite company. He isn't dressed for a wedding. I guess he's not here to stay there.

A part of me wants to hug him and be delight that he's here on my wedding day. My best friend, my should-have-been brother.

The rest of he had run cold with terror, scared of what he might do. There is a still silence between us. Of the thing we could both say or do and the thing we're never going to have the courage to say.

I don't want him here, not now. Not on my wedding day. It's too late or at least I want it to be. Nothing he could say to me would stop me from marrying Joe –who's a good man.

Good enough.

Joe. Do I love him? I'm not actually sure. I've never known what love was, the only thing I could ever say that felt something like love was what I felt for Terry and words failed even then.

I've seen it; I saw it in Terry and Dana - when they were together, when they were engaged... I was always watching him and his life, always his Oracle and never really real. I was always what Terry – no, what _Batman_ needed me to be, never what I needed.

Joe saw me; he loved me even when he knew I couldn't give him my heart. Joe was what I need, even if not what I wanted.

Terry just watches me finish up – he doesn't help, he doesn't hinder. Maybe he's trying to drive me mad with curiosity – which is working. He's here to say something, yet doesn't he say it?

Again my hand brushes my bare neck. I'm not sure if I should be worried or not, it's my family tradition for the bride to always wear a necklace symbolising her new life. I can't believe that it's not here. A bad omen perhaps but I'm not superstitious.

But I already broke that tradition by choosing the one Diana gave me – what did that mean? Choosing the League over my-husband-to-be.

But then, I'm an Oracle – and Oracles don't see their own future.

I know Terry's though... I know what his future is to be, purely because I know the past. History repeated itself in the creation of Batman and I see no sign of the ending changing at all.

A knock on the door.

It's a sign, time to go and embrace my new life. I stand up but I don't turn to face him – Terry doesn't say anything anyway and he's standing next to the door.

There was a time, a long time ago, when we never need to say a thing to each other because we already knew– now however we can't ever look at each other because of the things we can't say or just can't take back. He loved Dana and I lik-love Joe...

His eyes are still burning into me and I wonder again what he wants. A second chance? We never had a first. I don't know any words that could made me stop and I know he could never say any on them anyhow.

I turn, ready to face whatever the end looks like. Why did I think that by not getting a reply would mean he wasn't coming? No mortal can stop the end, not even an Oracle- not even Batman, not matter how much we dread it.

Time to grown up and face the reality. We're not kids anymore.

I can't see my own future but I'm sure that I can guess anyway.

He looks so much like his father right now, so much like the original Batman that I could almost see the two lines parallel in my mind and merge. Different beginnings, same ending.

For some reasons, I wonder wither Nightwing knows Batman's here. Maybe it's because I still see the same old Mattie who watched us grow up and just how much of a stranger Terry has become to me.

Maybe it's because I see another history reply it's self with them. Matt was never a robin, he could never agree on crime fight methods with Terry – the two fought so viciously over it that sometime we were scared that they would never make up again. They did. But Batman and Nightwing tore a hole between Terry and Matt that things could never been the same. The Batman legacy tore the two brothers apart similar to have it tore us apart.

I wonder if this was how Barbara felt on her wedding day. Of the day she tied herself to a man she knew could never hold her heart the way another did.

I still think Bruce was a fool to letting her go, for being too stubborn to admit that Bruce Wayne need Barbara more that Batman ever need Batgirl. For letting Bruce Wayne died and Batman take over.

I still think Barbara was fool for trying to walk away from him when she needed him to feel alive...

But If I'm Barbara and Terry's Bruce then Dana...Dana must be the lovely Diana. Now don't get me wrong, I love Diana, Terry loves Diana, everyone love Diana and sometime I wonder what life would have been like if what she and Bruce had made it. She was like a mother to me and later a mother to both Terry and Matt - which I think must have been a terrible curse. To help and love the sons of the only man you love yet always aware of the fact they aren't your children.

Kind of like raising a daughter who looks so very much like the wife of your lover.

What Diana and Bruce had felt apart leaving Bruce alone and Diana heartbroken. When Terry and Dana had felt apart leaving Terry alone and Dana dead...

I hate the things I see sometimes.

But it's time to face the music...then Terry opens his mouth and I remember how he's was never Bruce Wayne...

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That will be one review per Oracle-story please! Divine Seers are never cheap!


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